Folkloric dancer refuses to let violent crash slow her momentum

STOCKTON - Lorena Becerra has spent her life on her feet, dancing and teaching.

Dana M. Nichols

STOCKTON - Lorena Becerra has spent her life on her feet, dancing and teaching.

Then, on the way home from midnight Mass in the wee hours of Christmas morning 2006, an intoxicated driver steered his vehicle into the car in which she was a passenger.

Medics arrived on the scene and asked her a question that shook her to the core:

"They asked me, 'Can you move your toes?' "

"Everything hit me. What if I can't walk again? What if I can't dance?"

She did move her toes. She spent more than three months in a wheelchair. And though she still has pain, she is back on her feet leading folkloric dance troupes at University of the Pacific and in Modesto.

"I am grateful each day that I wake up," Becerra said from her office at University of the Pacific.

Becerra's grandparents were immigrants from the town of Mixtlan in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Thanks to those grandparents, she grew up speaking Spanish even though she was born and raised in Modesto.

"My grandfather was the one that took me to see my first folkloric dance performance," Becerra said. "I fell in love with the dresses and the vibrant colors.

She became a dancer as a child. By the time she was a teenager, she was leading the Grupo Folklorico Mixtlan in Modesto.

Even as she attended college, earned degrees and launched a career teaching Spanish language and literature, Becerra deepened her understanding of Mexican folkloric dance.

During travels to Mexico, she's purchased dresses. She's witnessed dances in various regions and also has been part of scholarly efforts to reconstruct lost dances. She's developed a notation for recording the movements of the dances.

Thanks to interviews with people who witnessed the dance decades ago, Becerra was able to help reconstruct a Baja California folk dance in what is called the "calabaciado" style.

"There has been a trend of documenting it," she said of her ancestral homeland's many folk dances.

In 2009, she founded the Danzantes de Pacific dance troupe on the University's campus.

"It started with three students and myself," Becerra said.

There have been challenges. One was that the university has few wooden floors that would give the traditional look and sound to performances. Her solution: the troupe now has portable wooden dance boards to set up wherever they go.

Another challenge: Recruiting men. Although a number of men have been part of the troupe over the years, it currently doesn't have any.

But the rewards have also been many. Not only has she kept a traditional art form alive, but the related history she's learned enriches the Spanish literature and language courses she teaches at Pacific.

Right now, however, she does dance strictly as a volunteer.

"I'm doing it because it is my passion," Becerra said.

Still, it is possible that her passion and profession may merge at some point.

"We are working to create a course on campus where the students (in the dance troupe) will be receiving credit," Becerra said.